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This document is a mostly multiple choice test for content given to Maryland high school students enrolled in a government course. The test is divided into 2 sessions, with 25 questions in session 1 and 56 questions in session 2. The multiple choice questions are designated as selected response questions. Other constructed response questions require a written answer. (BT)

This report presents an analysis of data obtained from the Missouri Education Assessment project conducted during the school year 1970-71. It was found that elementary education in Missouri compares very favorably with the national norm. Grades four and six were selected to represent elementary education. Schools were randomly selected within the parameters of district classification and relative size of the district. Assessment data were based on The Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills and the Short Form Test of Academic Achievement. Four curricular areas were investigated: reading, language, mathematics, and study skills. Data analysis was conducted from within three contexts: (1) achievement of Missouri elementary students relative to established norms; (2) obtained student achievement relative to anticipated achievement; and (3) the relationships between achievement and selected variables such as test scores and educational and demographic characteristics related to the sample schools and districts. Results of the study are analyzed and presented in tables and graphs, and possible problem areas are identified. (Author/DI)

This paper considers the question of bias in group administered academic achievement tests, bias which is inherent in the instruments themselves. A body of data on the test of performance of three disadvantaged minority groups--northern, urban black; southern, rural black; and, southwestern, Mexican-Americans--as tryout samples in contrast to white, advantaged groups in the same regions, was analyzed using five different general methods for examining tests for bias. In an item tryout, a set of items is administered to a sample of the relevant population and the results are then examined item by item in an effort to pick the more effective items. The first method is an item selection routine using the point biserial correlation for each item as the criterion. The second method, group by score interactions, involves dividing the tryout group into, say, fourths, based on quartiles, and examining the proportion of the cases making each possible response in each of these levels. The third method involves plotting item difficulties so as to locate aberrant items. The fourth method involves estimating and plotting item characteristic curves separately for each group and comparing the plots. The fifth method comprises various intergroup factor analytic approaches. (Author/JM)

A comprehensive assessment was made of the status of elementary education in Missouri in reading, mathematics, language, and study skills. The Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills (CTBS) and the Short Form Test of Academic Aptitude (SFTAA) were administered to a sample of Missouri fourth and sixth graders. For each curricular area, Missouri achievement was compared to the national norm. For reading, math, and language, the achievement of Missouri students was also compared to their anticipated achievement, and the distribution of anticipated achievement in Missouri was compared to the 10-10 distribution of the norm group. Four main conclusions were drawn: (1) students performed at or above the national norms; (2) they generally equaled or exceeded what was expected of them; (3) little relationship existed between school characteristics and achievement; and (4) when the achievement levels of students in the three district classifications (according to size) were compared, no definite trends in achievement across the four curricular areas were apparent. (Author/KM)

This paper is concerned with the accusations made by such groups as the Association of Black Psychologists in their call for a moratorium on testing, that standardized tests are biased. A biased test measures one trait in one group of people but a different trait in a second group. Evidence about the amount of bias in tests is thin. Bias must be determined by research on each instrument. A commitment to such research is in order. If bias is found, reasonable courses of action include test revision, alteration in interpretation, and discontinuance of testing. (Author/AG)

To determine if tryout samples typically used for item selection contribute to test bias against minority groups, item analyses were made of the California Achievement Tests using seven subgroups of the standardization sample: Northern White Suburban, Northern Black Urban, Southern White Suburban, Southern Black Rural, Southern White Rural, Southwestern Mexican Urban and Southwestern Anglo-American Suburban. The best half of the items in each test were selected for each group. Typically about 30% of the items in the upper half of the distribution of item-test correlations for a group on a test did not meet this criterion with another group. By this criterion minority groups were relatively similar as were the three suburban groups. The resulting unique item tests did not correlate well with each other. Scores of minority groups were relatively better on the selected items. Thus, standard item selection procedures produce tests best suited to groups like the majority of the tryout sample and are therefore biased against other groups to some degree. This degree varies. Ways to minimize this bias need to be developed. (Author/MS)

The results of the Washington Elementary Educational Assessment Project (WEEAP) are presented in this report. The purposes of the Assessment project were (1) to assess the reading and mathematics achievement in Washington elementary schools by sampling fourth and sixth grade students in randomly selected school buildings; (2) to identify instructional objectives and to determine the degree to which students are achieving those objectives; and (3) to determine the degree to which students are achieving the level expected of them. Three instruments were administered concurrently; the California Achievement Tests, 1970; the Short Form Test of Academic Aptitude; and a fact sheet describing school characteristics, completed by school personnel. Six main conclusions were drawn from the results of the assessment, including the fact that the students generally scored as anticipated in reading and significantly below expectation in mathematics. (Author)

A study was designed to determine if the results of a previous investigation could be duplicated, and if so, whether the observed effect was independent of content. The results of the earlier study had indicated that shifting from one form or "code" of expression to another inhibits a student's ability to express a concept explaining a physical change (cause-effect relationship) but does not inhibit his description of that change. Three sets of demonstrations were developed and were presented on three different days to 289 advanced fourth graders from 12 schools. Each class was divided randomly into four treatment groups. Subjects watched a demonstration and then wrote or drew their answers to the questions, "What happened?" and "Why?" The same demonstration was repeated a second time with slightly different materials. Shifting expression groups (S) either drew first and wrote second or the reverse. Repeating expression groups (R) wrote or drew both times. Both the mean R-S difference score and a regression analysis, which treated each subject's score as a separate entity, favor repetition over shifting for correct concept expression. Since all subjects were fourth graders, it is possible that the phenomena noted are developmental and therefore would be absent in older or younger subjects. Appended are the descriptions of the materials and instructions, and the tables developed in the analyses. (LS)

Background Secondary fungal infection is a major complication in patients with sepsis-associated immunosuppression. However, sepsis-induced immune alterations related to fungal susceptibility have not been well characterized. Objectives To determine kinetic changes in the immune phenotype by determining the proportion of T cells, B cells and macrophages, and especially the expression of an immune exhaustion marker PD-1, in murine sepsis. In addition, sepsis -induced alterations of these immune cells were assessed in relation to susceptibility to secondary fungal infection. Methods Cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) was used as a mouse sepsis model, with Candida albicans as the secondary systemic fungal infection. Splenic T cells, B cells and macrophages were assessed by flow cytometry. Results Alterations in T cell and B cell numbers and the proportion of PD-1 expressing T cells and B cells in CLP mice were not clearly related to susceptibility to secondary Candida infection. By contrast, changes in levels of CD86+-activated macrophages, and the proportion of the PD-1+ population among the CD86+ macrophages in CLP mice were found to be related to secondary fungal infection susceptibility. Conclusions Macrophage activation and exhaustion might be a significant determinant in susceptibility to fungal infection, and outcomes of infection. This study provided more comprehensive knowledge pertinent to patient evaluation and therapeutics design in restoring host defenses against secondary fungal infection in those with sepsis.

This book is a collection of papers presented at the symposium, "Conference on Ordinal Scales of Cognitive Development, sponsored by the California Test Bureau. Papers include: "The Theory of Stages in Cognitive Development" (J. Piaget); "Two Approaches to Intelligence: Piagetian and Psychometric" (D. Elkind); "An Implicit Metric for Ordinal Scales: Implications for Assessment of Cognitive Growth" (P. M. Bentler); "Theoretical Regularities and Individual Idiosyncrasies" (R. D. Tuddenham); "Some Problems Associated with Formal Thought and Its Assessment" (K. Lovell); "The Role of Experience in the Rate and Sequence of Cognitive Development" (M. L. Goldschmid); "Does the Piagetian Approach Imply Instruction?" (S. E. Englemann); "Developmental Theory and Diagnostic Procedures" (B. Inhelder); "Developmental Stages and Developmental Processes" (H. Beilin); "The Uses of Verbal Behavior in Assessing Children's Cognitive Abilities" (J. H. Flavell); "Closing Remarks" (B. Inhelder and J. Piaget). The following papers were not read at the conference, but were presented in written and outline form respectively: "Montonicity Analysis: An Alternative to Linear Factor and Test Analysis" (P. M. Bentler); "Assessing Cognitive Development via Measures of Optimal Performance" (J. D. Ayers). Comments and open floor discussions on each paper are included. (MS)

Musical performances in the 19th century were often framed within a social and memorial context, which sits uneasy with notions of absolute music. Nonetheless, it remains beyond doubt that a significant share of public concerts and operatic performances served exactly such purposes. Orchestras and opera companies did regularly perform in order to raise money for their own pension funds or for other charitable causes. As events of this kind were normally held outside the subscription series and the musicians waived their fees, the gross income of ticket sales went directly to the beneficiaries, which may have been artefacts (such as the erection of a Beethoven monument in Bonn, to which Schumann contributed his Fantasie, op. 17) or human victims of natural disasters and hardships. Frequently the function of a charity concert was marked with a musical work explicitly written for the occasion. Innumerable references in programme listings document that such compositions must have existed in huge numbers, even though, due to their ephemeral status, they were normally not preserved for posterity. The resulting loss of source material has deprived us of an important aspect of 19th-century musical culture has fallen almost completely into oblivion. Among the orchestral materials of the Bavarian Court Opera, however, a rare instance of a benefit work has survived unnoticed: In 1851 Ignaz Lachner penned a melodramatic Prologue for the Benefit of the descendants of the late Kapellmeister Albert Lortzing, who had died earlier in the same year in bitter poverty, leaving behind a destitute widow and children. Albeit belatedly, the musical world was eager to pay a tribute to the foremost composers of German comic operas and organised many a fund-raising concert - including the Munich performance of opera Czaar und Zimmermann (Tsar and Carpenter). The paper uses Lachner's prologue as a case study to recover a little-known aspect of 19th-century music, which intertwines memorial and charitable functions.

How do we prepare now for a future of unprecedented resource scarcity and environmental change? Unless we take radical steps to increase the resilience and sustainability of critical infrastructure, access to vital systems and services is at risk. This paper highlights the dynamic forces increasing the vulnerability of current infrastructure and services and presents the case for distributed systems as an alternative design model. We suggest this model exists in the natural environment and in production and consumption systems that have already begun adapting to conditions of increased uncertainty, resource scarcity and a ‘low-carbon’ future. A distributed approach to system design offers many benefits over traditional infrastructure models. Research and case studies strongly suggest such an approach can: - Increase the physical resilience of infrastructure - Foster social and institutional flexibility and innovation - Reduce the environmental footprint of production and consumption

The Dutch working group for the "Revision of the decision tree leaching" commissioned by the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, has worked on the improvement of the decision tree leaching, including triggers, safety factors, scenarios, models, field- en lysimeter studies and monitoring. The guidelines developed by the working group enable a more consistent and comprehensive registration process for pesticide admission. This report deals with monitoring in the decision tree. In the registration process in the Netherlands the precautionary principle will always be followed which implies that a pesticide is not registered until it has been demonstrated that it complies with legal criteria. Monitoring results will be introduced in the final phase of registration. A prerequisite is that the monitoring data comply with generally accepted quality standards and, if applicable, international Good Laboratory Practice protocols. Furthermore the monitoring programmes should be dedicated to the question whether the substance of interest will leach when it is applied according to Good Agricultural Practice. This report gives guidelines for the set-up of monitoring studies and interpretation and evaluation of monitoring data to be used in the registration process. Furthermore guidance for summarising and evaluation of monitoring results is provided.

The Dutch decision tree on leaching from soil has been re-designed to be more in line with EU guidelines on the assessment of the leaching potential of substances. The new decision tree explicitly defines reasonable worst-case conditions as the 90th percentile of the area to which a substance is applied. The tree also determines whether the median annual leaching concentration over a period of 20, 40 or 60 years complies with the EU-drinking water limit, with the length of the period depending on the application frequency. The FOCUS Kremsmnster scenario, officially adopted in the Netherlands as the national scenario, is, in the first tier, used to identify substances with a negligible leaching risk, which can then be registered without further assessment. The core of the decision tree is the second tier, in which the spatially distributed model, GeoPEARL, is used to calculate the leaching. The third tier considers the water-saturated zone up to a depth of 10 m below soil surface. As this tier did not need an update, the new approach is expected to have very little influence on the number of registered substances. Comparing the new approach with the old, we found the new first tier to be almost as strict as the old one, at least when the safety factor of 100 was not used, as in the old tree. For substances for which the leaching concentration was calculated at around 0,1 ug dm-3 using the old procedure, GeoPEARL yielded results that were approximately 10 times higher. This difference was mainly due to the annual application of the substances in the new procedure.

Immunosuppression is a major feature of septic shock and patients are at increased risk for opportunistic infections. We describe a successful use of immunostimulation to treat mixed mould and bacterial superinfection in a previously healthy 38-year-old female patient admitted for severe extensive fasciitis. Interferon gamma associated with nivolumab reversed successfully deactivation of immune cells assessed by altered expressions of monocyte human leukocyte antigen-DR (HLA-DR) and lymphocyte programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1). Immunosuppressed patients in ICU with invasive bacterial and fungal infections may benefit from immunostimulation.

International audience; Cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) gene polymorphisms influence the exposure to tramadol (T) and its pharmacologically active metabolite, O-demethyl tramadol (O-dT). Tramadol has been considered as a candidate probe drug for CYP2D6 phenotyping. The objective of the CYTRAM study was to investigate the value of plasma O-dT/T ratio for CYP2D6 phenotyping. European adult patients who received IV tramadol after surgery were included. CYP2D6 genotyping was performed and subjects were classified as extensive (EM), intermediate (IM), poor (PM), or ultra-rapid (UM) CYP2D6 metabolizers. Plasma concentrations of tramadol and O-dT were determined at 24 h and 48 h. The relationship between O-dT/T ratio and CYP2D6 phenotype was examined in both a learning and a validation group. Genotype data were obtained in 301 patients, including 23 PM (8%), 117 IM (39%), 154 EM (51%), and 7 UM (2%). Tramadol trough concentrations at 24 h were available in 297 patients. Mean value of O-dT/T ratio was significantly lower in PM than in non-PM individuals (0.061 ± 0.031 versus 0.178 ± 0.09, p < 0.01). However, large overlap was observed in the distributions of O-dT/T ratio between groups. Statistical models based on O-dT/T ratio failed to identify CYP2D6 phenotype with acceptable sensitivity and specificity. Those results suggest that tramadol is not an adequate probe drug for CYP2D6 phenotyping.

Recent studies investigated the association of cardiorespiratory ftness with white matter microstructure in children, yet little work has explored to what extent other components of physical ftness (i.e., muscular or motor ftness) are associated with white matter microstructure. Indeed, this association has not been previously explored in children with overweight/obesity who present a diferent white matter development. Therefore, we aimed to examine associations between physical ftness components and white matter microstructure in children with overweight/obesity. In total, 104 (10.04 ± 1.15 years old; 43 girls) children were included in this cross-sectional study. Physical ftness was assessed using the ALPHA-ftness test battery. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean difusivity were derived from difusion tensor imaging (DTI). No association was found between physical ftness and global DTI metrics (all P> 0.082). Within individual tracts, all associations became non-signifcant when analyses were adjusted for multiple comparisons. Using the voxel-wise approach, we identifed a small cluster in the left lateral frontal lobe where children with greater upper-body muscular ftness showed higher FA (PFWE-corrected = 0.042). Although our results cannot conclude physical ftness is related to white matter microstructure in children with overweight/obesity; those fndings indicate that the association of muscular ftness with white matter microstructure might be more focal on frontal areas of the brain, as opposed to global diferences., Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness DEP2013-47540 DEP2016-79512-R DEP2017-91544-EXP RTI2018-095284-J-100, European Union (EU), European Commission Joint Research Centre 667302, Alicia Koplowitz Foundation, University of Granada, Research and Knowledge Transfer Fund (PPIT) 2016, Excellence Actions Programme: Units of Excellence, Scientific Unit of Excellence on Exercise and Health (UCEES), Andalusian Regional Government, Regional Ministry of Economy, Knowledge, Entreprises and University, European Union (EU) SOMM17/6107/UGR, SAMID III network, RETICS - PN I+D+I 2017-2021 (Spain), Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport FPU14/06837 FPU 16/02760, Government of Andalusian, Integrated Territorial Initiative 2014-2020 for the province of Cadiz PI-0002-2017, Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities FJCI-2017-33396